


Pulled From The Wreckage

by ricochet



Series: Lucifer Bingo Fics (2019) [2]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Aftercare, Blood, Blood and Injury, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-23 20:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17690348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ricochet/pseuds/ricochet
Summary: They've been on Earth less than an hour and Mazikeen already misses Hell.





	Pulled From The Wreckage

There’s nowhere to take him. Lucifer is on his hands and knees on the sand with the tide coming in, laughing and gasping all at once. He sounds unhinged and halfway to sobbing. It’s probably the pain, Mazikeen thinks, looking at the severed wings. Her lord’s blood is drying on her arms and on the grip of her knife, and Mazikeen wants to be sick.

They need somewhere to go. Somewhere she can defend while Lucifer heals, however long that takes. Can angels even heal from something like this? They must be able to, she tells herself as she wipes her blade, this can’t be what kills him.

She can’t be what kills him.

“You have to get up,” she says crouching next to him and looking around the beach. He’s stopped laughing, at least. He’s mostly just breathing hard and watching the sand cover his hands and then wash away again. The sun is going down and the air off the water brings a chill with it. “We can’t stay here.”

For a moment she thinks he isn’t hearing her, but finally he nods and begins to push himself up. He lets out a miserable sounding groan as the muscles in his back flex. She can see them move in the open wounds she’s left. The scars are going to be massive.

“Mazikeen.” He takes hold of her arm and seems to run out of breath. His voice sounds like he’s been screaming for hours even though he endured his mutilation with barely a sound.

“Here,” she says and braces herself as much as she can on the sand. She gets an arm around his waist, low enough to avoid the wounds, and his skin is slick with blood even if it's hard to see it against the red of his skin. Mazikeen takes a breath and pulls. Hauls the devil up off his knees and doesn't think about the symbolism.

Lucifer makes a ragged sound as she helps him stand, something that would be a scream if he weren't strangling it in its infancy. It comes out a moan run through a grater and dusted with salt. Once he's on his feet he sways until she gets him to lean on her and stop trying to stand under his own power. He's lighter than she expects.

Together they stumble over the sand in the direction of the high tide line. Past that is the light pollution of a human city, and Mazikeen dreads the idea of trying to navigate such a place like this. But the luck of the devil is with them, it seems, because not far off she finds a restaurant, closed for the day, with an easily forced lock. She drags them inside. Lucifer is struggling to walk even with her support. At the counter there are high stools with no backs, and they get him settled on one, leaning forward and braced on his elbows.

She raids the linens once she finds them, stacks of white towels and black aprons, and pauses to scrub at some of the blood on her arms. It’s gone sticky on her skin, and it drags against the cloth. She finds a sink, runs it until the water steams, and comes back to Lucifer with full hands.

He’s sitting with his head on his arms and breathing in a steady rhythm that has to be deliberate. The sun’s nearly all the way down now, and she hasn’t turned on the lights. Humans are nearly as opportunistic and violent as demons, and they don’t need to deal with anything else right now. She makes her steps loud against the floor so Lucifer’s not startled by her approach. “Hold still,” she says, and begins to clean the uninjured skin of his back with a still steaming towel. The blood comes away with some effort, but the way it pulls at his skin has Lucifer digging his fingers into the wood of the counter hard enough to leave furrows.

Mazikeen grits her teeth and tries to work faster.

She ruins three towels just clearing off enough of the drying blood to see how much is still coming, but finally she can see that the bleeding has stopped in all but the deepest cuts. Even those are more a steady ooze than the previous torrent. The time seems to crawl and sputter irregularly; cleaning the wounds takes years, but the lights moving across the walls from the road flash by too quickly to count. Eventually Lucifer’s back is swathed in white again, but unlike his feathers the rough cloth of the towels are probably going to turn red quickly. The counter in front of him is gouged in multiple places. She stands in a ring of bloodied cloth.

“We can’t stay here,” says Mazikeen. “We need somewhere defensible.”

Lucifer stands slowly, but he stands straight with only a hiss of discomfort. It’s a definite improvement. “Well we can’t go out like this,” he says looking down at his hands and chest. He closes his eyes and slowly the red of his skin fades into something pale and unscarred. The effort leaves him swaying on his feet, but he steadies himself before she needs to. He looks at the wreckage surrounding them and then at the room they’re in. “Mazikeen, where are my wings?”

All she can do is blink at him for a moment in confusion. “I left them on the beach.” What else was she supposed to do with the bloody things?

“I won’t leave them for some human.”

As though he’s in any shape to go get them, she thinks. “Fine. I’ll go back for them. Where can we go next?”

The light crawling over the walls from the road casts strange shadows on his face, and Mazikeen tries not to shiver at the way it makes him look almost lost. When he speaks next though, it’s as firm as it is focused. “My wings, Mazikeen.”

She grits her teeth in frustration, and something she won’t call fear, and goes to retrieve them.

The beach is easier to cover without Lucifer weighing down her shoulder, and bleeding all over her arm. She’s surprised, but glad, to see there isn’t a trail of blood across the sand, and their tracks are easily obscured by the wind coming off the ocean. The tide has continued its advance across the beach, and by the time she gets back to them the tips of his wings are getting waterlogged and crusted in salt.

The wings are heavier than they felt when she pulled them free of his back, and they’re awkward to carry. Mazikeen struggles with them for a moment before finally managing to fold them enough to get a better grip. Touching them makes her skin crawl. The wind has picked up in the time it’s taken to wrangle the masses of feathers. Mazikeen throws a glance to the horizon and freezes. Clouds pile up on each other in black walls, and lightning flashes in the midst of them. She knows too much to put stock in omens, but there’s no arguing with fact. There’s a storm coming, and Mazikeen has no idea how they are going to weather it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> For the bingo square "aftercare".  
> Title from Sarah McLachlan's "Angel." Because I think I'm funny.  
> Thank you to [HiroMyStory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiroMyStory) and [Alethia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alethia) for the beta and feedback.


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